Galakuro GeForce RTX 3050 GPUs went on sale in Japan on Friday. Galakuro is a graphics cards supplier affiliated with Galax that sells graphics cards in Japan. While announcing its entry-level Ampere GPU for desktops, Nvidia said that the product wouldn’t bring the latest technologies to budget-conscious customers.
In the USA, you can pick up the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 for an MSRP of $249 which is quite high for an entry-level GPU. But in Japan, gamers were paying a whopping ￥50,138 ($439 with taxes) at Amazon Japan. Although there was a huge surge in the price, the graphics cards were sold out in hours.
Galakuro’s GeForce RTX 3050 is a typical budget graphics card based on the rather expensive GA106-150 GPU with 2,560 enabled CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR6 memory connected using a 128-bit memory interface cooled with a simplistic single-fan cooling system. The GeForce RTX 3050 has four display outputs: four DisplayPort 1.4 outputs and one HDMI 2.1 port, just like any other RTX 30-series GPU.
The shortage of graphics cards, in general, has driven up prices of high-end and enthusiast-grade graphics cards with scalpers added to the equation. It is not surprising that even entry-level products are being sold beyond their MSRPs.
Many people in Japan don’t mind the $400 price tag as hardware is usually expensive and finding it at Amazon’s online store for that is the minimal cost it is available at.
It is not only Japan that has a graphics card shortage. This is an issue around the globe with many gamers not being able to buy the latest graphics cards at an affordable price.
